Bridget Cleary was baptised on 3rd June 1855 at Monasterevin in County Kildare, daughter of a blacksmith named Maurice Cleary and his wife Alice (known as Ally) Dunne. The family lived at Skirteen, a townland to the west of the town, on the opposite side of the River Barrow.

In 1872, when Bridget was 16 years old, her mother Ally died at Skirteen.

On 9th May 1889, aged 33, Bridget married Thomas Doyle, a policeman from County Kilkenny. However, they did not marry in Ireland, but in England, at Brompton Oratory, the (then recently completed) largest Catholic Church in London. They did not stay long in England, returning to Ireland before 1890. They settled in Dublin, where they lived at 8 Lombard Street West, a modest Victorian terraced bungalow to the south of the city centre. Whilst living there they had four sons, although their third son died as a baby.

Bridget died either giving birth to her fourth son or shortly afterwards - his birth and her death were both registered in the March quarter of 1898. She was 42.

After Bridget's death, Thomas sent the three surviving boys, aged from about eight down to newborn, to live with Bridget's unmarried brother and sister, Thomas and Eliza Cleary, who lived at Skirteen in Monasterevin, where Bridget had been born and brought up. After Thomas retired from the police he went to live with them there.